Django Unchained (2012) - IMDb IMDb There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. X Beta I'm Watching This! Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Error From $2.99 (SD) on Amazon Video ON DISC With the help of a German bounty hunter, a freed slave sets out to rescue his wife from a brutal Mississippi plantation owner. Director: Famous Directors: From Sundance to Prominence From Christopher Nolan to Quentin Tarantino and every Coen brother in between, many of today's most popular directors got their start at the Sundance Film Festival . Here's a list of some of the biggest names to go from Sundance to Hollywood prominence.

a list of 37 titles created 25 Sep 2012 a list of 35 titles created 16 Dec 2012 a list of 22 titles created 18 Jul 2013 a list of 31 titles created 15 Jan 2014 a list of 40 titles created 3 months ago Search for " Django Unchained " on Amazon.com Connect with IMDb Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. Won 2 Oscars. Another 54 wins & 144 nominations. See more awards » Videos In Nazi-occupied France during World War II, a plan to assassinate Nazi leaders by a group of Jewish U.S. soldiers coincides with a theatre owner's vengeful plans for the same. Directors: Quentin Tarantino, Eli Roth Stars: Brad Pitt, Diane Kruger, Eli Roth The lives of two mob hit men, a boxer, a gangster's wife, and a pair of diner bandits intertwine in four tales of violence and redemption.

Director: Quentin Tarantino Based on the true story of Jordan Belfort , from his rise to a wealthy stock-broker living the high life to his fall involving crime, corruption and the federal government. Director: Martin Scorsese A thief, who steals corporate secrets through use of dream-sharing technology, is given the inverse task of planting an idea into the mind of a CEO. Director: Christopher Nolan An insomniac office worker, looking for a way to change his life, crosses paths with a devil-may-care soap maker, forming an underground fight club that evolves into something much, much more. Director: David Fincher Forrest Gump, while not intelligent, has accidentally been present at many historic moments, but his true love, Jenny Curran, eludes him. Director: Robert Zemeckis When the menace known as the Joker wreaks havoc and chaos on the people of Gotham, the caped crusader must come to terms with one of the greatest psychological tests of his ability to fight injustice. Director: Christopher Nolan Two detectives, a rookie and a veteran, hunt a serial killer who uses the seven deadly sins as his modus operandi.

Director: David Fincher 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 8.5/10 X Eight years after the Joker's reign of anarchy, the Dark Knight, with the help of the enigmatic Selina, is forced from his imposed exile to save Gotham City, now on the edge of total annihilation, from the brutal guerrilla terrorist Bane. Director: Christopher Nolan An undercover cop and a mole in the police attempt to identify each other while infiltrating an Irish gang in South Boston. Director: Martin Scorsese After a simple jewelry heist goes terribly wrong, the surviving criminals begin to suspect that one of them is a police informant. Director: Quentin Tarantino In 1954, a U.S. marshal investigates the disappearance of a murderess who escaped from a hospital for the criminally insane. Director: Martin Scorsese Edit Storyline Former dentist, Dr. King Schultz, buys the freedom of a slave, Django, and trains him with the intent to make him his deputy bounty hunter. Instead, he is led to the site of Django's wife who is under the hands of Calvin Candie, a ruthless plantation owner.

Written by BenLobel Life, liberty and the pursuit of vengeance. See more » Genres: Motion Picture Rating ( MPAA ) Rated R for strong graphic violence throughout, a vicious fight, language and some nudity | See all certifications » Parents Guide: 25 December 2012 (USA) See more » Also Known As: Django sin cadenas See more » Filming Locations: $30,122,888 (USA) (28 December 2012) Gross: Did You Know? Trivia The Italian song playing right before Django and Broomhilda reunite translates as «Still here/ still you/ although now/ I know who you are/ who you will always be/ and when you'll see me// you'll remember/ still here/ still you/ I hope that you will forgive me/ you -your eyes are still the same- you seem to ask again about me/ about how things are/ [...] something that will come back/ as it was again/ still here/ still you/ and what's been its gone by now/ and [song ends abruptly]». See more » Goofs The plantation in Tennessee is covered with Spanish Moss.

Spanish Moss is native to the deep south and doesn't grow as far north as Tennessee. See more » Quotes [first lines] Dicky Speck : [cocks rifle] Who's that stumblin' around in the dark? State your business or prepare to get winged! See more » Crazy Credits Normally, the logo for The Weinstein Company is silent. In this film, it is accompanied with the theme music for Miramax from the early 90s, in a nod to Tarantino's first 2 films. See more » Connections Written by Franco Micalizzi (as F. Micalizzi), Harold Stott (as L. Stott) Performed by Annibale E I Cantori Moderni Courtesy of Carosello C.E.M.E.D., Italy (United States) – See all my reviews I know claiming "Tarantino's Best" is quite a statement with such films as "Pulp Fiction" and "Inglorious Bastards", however I truly believe it is. Django Unchained is superb from start to finish, it's a 2 hour and 45 minute movie yet you're on the edge of your seat, eyes glued to the screen for the whole ride.

It's the closest thing to a flawless movie I have ever seen. Before I continue my praise of this movie, let me say this "the movie is not for everyone." Clearly its rated R and it has several gruesome violent scenes, it also contains vulgar language and numerous uses of the "n" word. Some may claim it's excessive, but I personally appreciate how realistic it portrays the horror and tragedy of slavery. That being said, I am torn if I am more impressed with Tarantino as a writer of this movie or its director. He simply is a cinematic genius. The casting of this movie alone deserves an Oscar. Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, and Leonardo DiCaprio all put on Oscar worthy performances, and frankly, I would be astonished if they all did not win. I truly can't picture any actor on this planet being able to play any of those three roles as magnificently as these three actors did. I sum this movie into three general thirds, First: where Waltz steals the show, Second: where DiCaprio steals the show, and Third: where Foxx steals the show.

I have only seen Waltz in "Inglorious Bastards" other than "Django Unchained" and he is rapidly climbing my favorite actors list. Leo is my personal favorite actor ever since his performance in "The Departed" and it was incredible to see him take on the challenging role as his first villain, Calvin Candie, possibly the most evil character I've ever seen in a film. Finally Jamie Foxx from start to finish played his best performance in any movie to date. Simply phenomenal. I loved how the audience sees his character evolve from a powerless slave to a confident powerful man. In addition to these three remarkable performances, Kerry Washington and Samuel L. Jackson also deliver. Washington goes through living hell yet remains a strong woman throughout. Jackson plays a very interesting role as Stephen, Leo's loyal house slave. Trust me, you will hate him yet at the same time he is hilarious. Now's a good time to mention, this movie is funny! Tarantino perfectly tosses in frequent bursts of pure laughter throughout the movie to lighten up from the serious aspects of the movie. There is one scene in particular, involving Jonah Hill and Don Johnson, which had the crowd roaring in laughter for a solid full minute.

Which brings me to my next point, the cast is absurd! The rather small roles for such big actors such as Jonah Hill and Don Johnson, just shows how honored actors are taking any role no matter how small for a Quentin Tarantino film. I recognized famous actors and actresses throughout the entire movie. There is one brief scene, where I believe I even saw famous rapper "Childish Gambino" for literally just a few seconds as a slave in Mississippi. This movie was done perfectly to a tee; even the remarkable soundtrack caught my attention, nicely combining songs of the past with modern day songs. This movie is a western, a drama, a tragedy, a comedy, an action, a thriller, and at it's deepest roots a romance. If you haven't already, stop what you're doing and see this movie today. Whatever you're doing can wait but this movie can't. Just make sure your 17, have your license, and have a stomach for more of the most gruesome violence I have yet to see on a screen.

In conclusion, I've heard rumors of Tarantino pondering the idea of retiring as a director and Oo what a sad day that would be for movie lovers like myself, but if they are true at least he's going out with one hell of a BANG! 316 of 601 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes ‎Django Unchained (2012) directed by Quentin Tarantino • Reviews, film + cast • Letterboxd "Gentlemen, you had my curiousity. But now, you have my attention." Calvin Candie Quentin Tarantino has had my attention since the very first time I saw Pulp Fiction. It was the first film I ever saw where one of the first words that came to mind was masterpiece! It was my first Tarantino, I've seen everything he's directed since and I've been impressed every damn time. In my opinion he simply doesn't make bad films. So with everything I said in the above paragraph in mind, I went into Django Unchained with very high expectations. HOLY SHIT! Tarantino not only meets my high expectations of him but he far exceeds them.

Simply put he has created another masterpiece that will… 54 It was only a matter of time before Tarantino tackled the Western directly. His career from the very beginning has openly referenced the genre and the great directors that made their name in it. What surprised me most about Django Unchained, his latest epic revenge fantasy, is that whilst it quite clearly references the likes of Leone, Corbucci and Sollima, as well as obscure and forgotten blaxploitation flicks, it is rarely a slave (if you pardon the pun) to the films it doffs its stetson too. Unlike Kill Bill which was essentially a finely tuned mixtape of homages and pastiches, here the references are background details and in that way this might be Tarantino’s most confident work in over a… 63 It's not you, Django, it's me. At least I think it is. First off, I do not like Westerns. At all. I had my hopes pinned on Mr. Tarantino to save the genre for me, but I'm afraid he didn't. Second, I love Tarantino. I have seen all his films and while not all his films are masterpieces, there are some true gems there.

I also have no problems with the 'Tarantino universe' and his self-referential, homage/collage style. It works for me. And the ironic thing is that it is exactly that that seems to be this film's biggest flaw. More on that later, first the good bits. The acting is absolutely superb. The main trio of performances, with the… 70 You know how I only normally do one quote at the beginning of my reviews? Well, just to emphasise the genius of the dialogue, here’s four of the best lines from the four leads: “Jesus Christ, Stephen, what is the point of having a n***er that speak German, if ya can’t wheel ‘em out when you have a German guest?!” – Calvin Candie “Django! You uppity son of a-” - Stephen “Our mutual friend has a flair for the dramatic.” - Dr King Schultz “D’Artagnan, motherf**ker!” - Django Freeman Well…where to start? I don’t really know. I know for sure that its Tarantino’s 4th best film to date, but that doesn’t really tell me how much I love it.

It… Review by Eren Suzer ★★★★½ 'Django Unchained' was an amazing watch. I have been hearing great things about it for a long time, and it lived up to it. I really like Tarantino's choice of actors, and how some of the actors appear in his other movies, in time you get used to them and enjoy seeing them again and again. Leonardo's performance was great, this is the second time that he was able to make me hate his character, being the Southern slave owner in 'Django Unchained' and his other role that made me really mad at his character was in "The Blood Diamond". Jamie Foxx was very entertaining as usual, he was extra enjoyable to watch in this one due to his passive… Review by Taurantula ★½ So, this was the movie folks were either raving about or reviling. Twenty minutes into the movie I was already bored out of my mind and ready to disengage but I sucked it up and rode it on out. The trailer for this movie was just incredible, I thought this was going to be this great subversive nod to the legacy of the Nat Turners of the world. It wasn't. A few thoughts: 1).

THE SCRIPT: Quentin didn't deserve to win any awards for this script. It tried so hard to be clever, simultaneously 'hardcore' but 'liberal' but you know what it was? Boring. Verbose as fuck. Long-winded. Barely any great dialogue, monologues, diatribes, conversations, muses or nothing. Pretty much… Django Unchained - Rated the #1 movie in 2012 : 4 years Former dentist, Dr. King Schultz, buys the freedom of a slave, Django, and trains him with the intent to make him his deputy bounty hunter. Instead, he is led to the site of Django's wife who is under the hands of Calvin Candie, a ruthless plantation owner. Rating: IMDb / 8.5 Best Film of the Year The film has received overwhelmingly positive reviews from critics, and has garnered a rating of 88% on review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 247 critical reviews with an average rating of 8 out of 10.

The site’s consensus states: “Bold, bloody, and stylistically daring, Django Unchained is another incendiary masterpiece from Quentin Tarantino.” Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, gives the film a score of 81, indicating “universal acclaim”. Django Unchained earned a nomination for Best Theatrical Motion Picture from the Producers Guild of America. The American Film Institute named it one of their Top Ten Movies of the Year in December 2012. The film received three Golden Globe Award nominations, including Best Director and Best Screenplay for Tarantino. The NAACP Image Awards gave the film four nominations, while the National Board of Review named DiCaprio their Best Supporting Actor. // Christoph Waltz received the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor, and the BAFTA Award for Best Supporting Actor, his second time receiving all three awards, having previously won for his role in Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds. 0 “Pyscho” was the first American film to show a toilet flushing on screen.

In the original “Star Wars”, Darth Vadar only had 12 minutes of screen time. “Beauty and The Beast” was the first animated film to be nominated for an oscar. O.J Simpson almost played as the “Terminator” but the director thought his persona was “too pleasant”. The brain supplement company known as Cogniflex was inspired to develop a brain pill after “Limitless” the movie. Cogniflex realized that the use of nootropics in a capsule can closely mimic the effects of a “limitless pill”. During one of the scenes in “Django Unchained”,Leonardo DiCaprio smashes a table with his hand resulting in a piece of glass stabbing him. DiCaprio decided to continue the scene without an interrupting to better portray his character. How Quentin Tarantino Concocted a Genre of His Own - The New York Times The New York Times Photo The writer and director Quentin Tarantino. Credit Béatrice de Géa for The New York Times THE road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom, Blake wrote, and for the last few decades no one in Hollywood has followed that road more assiduously than Quentin Tarantino .

His movies are famous for their violence and bloodshed; their blaring soundtracks; their offbeat, Pinteresque dialogue; their startling performances from actors you had almost forgotten about; and their encyclopedic range of references to other movies, especially schlocky ones. He spent his formative years — the period when everyone else was in film school — working as a clerk in a video store, and it shows. His films are apt to allude to Godard in one frame and a movie like “Candy Stripe Nurses” or “ Dead Women in Lingerie ” in the next. “Pulp Fiction,” his breakout film, which was released in 1994, when Mr. Tarantino was just 31, made him an almost instant hero among younger audiences and younger filmmakers, and subsequent films like “Kill Bill Vols. 1 and 2” enhanced his reputation as someone who could break all the rules, making movies that were simultaneously stylish, exciting and knowingly cheesy, and somehow get away with it. Mr. Tarantino’s newest, “ Django Unchained ,” opens Tuesday and has already picked up five Golden Globe nominations, including one for best director.

It stars Christoph Waltz (the Austrian actor so memorable in “Inglourious Basterds” ) as a German bounty hunter posing as a dentist in antebellum America and Jamie Foxx as a newly freed slave hoping to rescue his enslaved wife. It has all the Tarantino trademarks: a Mexican standoff, torrents of blood, long sequences of mayhem, a spaghetti western score, and a sly and surprising performance by Samuel L. Jackson, who has become for Mr. Tarantino roughly what Max von Sydow was for Ingmar Bergman. For good measure it also includes a hundred or so uses of the most common racial slur, probably more than in any film since “Richard Pryor: Live in Concert.” This month Mr. Tarantino, 49, was in New York to attend a benefit at the Museum of Modern Art, which has chosen to include his movies as part of its film collection. He was dressed for the occasion like one of the characters in his first feature, “Reservoir Dogs” — white shirt, dark suit, dark tie loosened at the neck — but over lunch at Fiddlesticks, a West Village bar that is one of his hangouts, his affect was much less cool.

He was unable to contain his enthusiasm for movies, his own and just about everyone else’s. These are excerpts from that conversation. The language had to be cleaned up a little, but not as much as you might imagine. embed Q. A lot of directors would have made twice, three times that, and I’m guessing that this is not because you can’t find work. This is by choice, right? A. Oh, it’s definitely by choice. The thing about it is in 20 years a whole lot of directors could have made maybe double my movies. I don’t think that many writer-directors could have made double my filmography. I actually think my oeuvre or my filmography is the thing that is the most important to me as far as my artistic statement, or whatever. I’m all about my filmography, and if you’re all about your filmography, then you’re also all about a grade-point average, and one bad movie lessens three good ones. Advertisement Continue reading the main story I don’t want to be an old man directing. I think directors are like boxers. They need to know when to hang up the gloves.

They need to know if I go any further now, even though I might like it, I’m going to start taking too many hits. I do think it’s a young man’s game, and if I survive 20 more years, look at that filmography, and pretty good so far, I say. Q. Pretty good and maybe getting better. A. That’s the hope. I really think I have about 10 more years of being an artist with the vitality that I have right now, and at 10 years from now I think you will still see a complete umbilical cord from “Reservoir Dogs” to whatever that last movie that I end up doing is. But you can never predict this kind of stuff. Maybe when I’m 66, if I come up with a story I want to do, I’ll do it. Q. You’ve had this long and very happy relationship with the producer Harvey Weinstein. How is that even possible? Two strong-willed guys like you? A. Well, one of the big secrets of us being able to work together so long is that Harvey really likes my movies.

He’s a tough cookie, no three, four ways about it, but I look forward to him being a tough cookie. Most of the arguments back and forth that I hear between Harvey and another filmmaker, I’m usually on Harvey’s side. Not all the time. Sometimes he gets hung up on something that no one else gives a damn, but he’s usually erring on the side of, like, “Let’s not bore the audience.” Harvey’s pretty good about that. I think it’s pretty safe to say that my career as you know it would not have been the same if it wasn’t for my constant working with Harvey. Q. Is it like kids, or can you pick a favorite among your movies? A. I can’t pick a favorite, but I can break them down as far as spectacle, emotion, comedy in that kind of way. I think “Jackie Brown” would be my most emotional movie. I think “Kill Bill: Vol. 2” would probably be my second most emotional movie, but it might be tied with “Django.” I can’t tell right now. Time will tell. Q. The only movie you can even argue wasn’t a hit was “Death Proof.” A.

I still love “Death Proof.” It is the lesser of my movies though, and I don’t ever want to make anything lesser than that. Making “Django” Q. Did you write “Django Unchained” with Christoph Waltz in mind? A. I wanted to tell a story like this for a long time. I just didn’t know how I was going to go about it. I even knew it was going to be called “Django Unchained” for a long time. But Christoph’s character kind of sprang up fully formed. When I had come up with an idea for this story before, there wasn’t this German dentist walking around. But when I actually sat down to write the opening scene, the next thing I knew I was writing Dr. King Schultz. Advertisement Continue reading the main story The fact that Christoph is one of the greatest actors to ever say my dialogue goes a long way. Both Christoph and Sam Jackson have that kind of effect on me. It’s actually hard not to write for them because they sing my dialogue. They turn it into the music that it’s supposed to be. Q. So why is it called “Django Unchained”? A.

Because of the Sergio Corbucci movie “Django.” “Django Unchained” works good for a guy who used to be a slave, and it’s also a little bit of a throwback to the Hercules sequel, “ Hercules Unchained .” But that’s all I knew about it. In the case of this movie it was the first scene that dictated the whole thing. I was in Japan doing the press on “Inglourious Basterds.” Spaghetti westerns have had a gigantic resurgence in Japan. You can get all the soundtracks, so I loaded up. I was actually writing a piece on Corbucci and describing his kind of western. At one point I thought, “In truth I don’t really know if he was thinking all these things that I’m writing about, but I know I’m thinking them, and I can do them.” So with that I just sat down and the first scene just came out of me. Q. You actually write film criticism? A. Yeah. Not so much film reviews but film appreciations, and usually on directors or genres. I’m hoping to compile a book. Q. You do love genre movies. A. I think every movie is a genre movie.

A John Cassavetes movie is a John Cassavetes movie. Eric Rohmer movies are their own genre. But I also like the idea of subgenre. “Reservoir Dogs” is a crime film, it’s a gangster film, but more important it’s a heist film, even though you don’t really see the heist. I’ve always been influenced by the spaghetti western. I used to describe “Pulp Fiction” as a rock ’n’ roll spaghetti western with the surf music standing in for Ennio Morricone. I don’t know if “Django” is a western proper. It’s a southern. I’m playing western stories in the genre, but with a southern backdrop. Q. Well, there aren’t a lot of southerns and there certainly aren’t a lot of movies about slavery of this sort. Where besides Corbucci did you go for inspiration? A. There’s really nothing to look at. That was what made it so fascinating. If I had done the movie about Dr. King Schultz stopping a prison wagon and freeing a white guy who’s on his way to spend his life in Yuma prison, it would be the same basic story, but there would be none of the same issues.

That’s not what I wanted to do. I said, “Wow, I can do a lot of the cool situations and things that I’ve thought about, but it will be in this new, virgin-snow kind of genre.” Advertisement Continue reading the main story The closest to what I’m trying to do are those movies about the renegade Indian who’s had enough and fights back against the white oppressors. Particularly in the ’50s people started dealing with the Indian-white conflict in westerns as a way to have a social conscience. They couldn’t deal with the black situation in the ’50s in cinema, so they did it de facto by dealing with Indians. Q. One of the criticisms sometimes leveled at you is that Tarantino just makes movies about what happens in the universe of the movies. They’re not about the real world. But your last two movies, “Inglourious Basterds” and now “Django,” are about very real stuff, Nazism and slavery. Is that a deliberate change on your part? A. I don’t think it’s that big of a leap for the simple fact that I think my movies are more about something more than people give them credit for.

You don’t have to deal with the subtext of what they’re about if you don’t want to. But there is a lot of there there if you go digging. Casting Q. Like all your movies “Django” has some wonderful performances. You always seem to get the best from actors. A. I think it’s a three-way thing. I write good characters for actors to play. I cast actors with integrity, as opposed to trying to just match whoever’s hot with something going on. It’s like my character is more important than any given actor, if that makes sense. Nothing is more important than my characters. And then I do know how to direct actors, how to modulate them, get the best out of them. And I understand my material. I know how to help them navigate it, and when they deliver something magnificent, I know enough to realize it’s good and stay out of their way. Q. It seems to me it’s also casting with imagination. You’ve rediscovered so many people. John Travolta was pretty much history when you put him in “Pulp Fiction.” Pam Grier and Samuel L. Jackson, Robert Forster — these are people you found whom nobody else had thought about. A.

I remember about a year and a half after “Jackie Brown,” a big international producer said to me, “Quentin, now that it’s all said and done, do you wish you had cast bigger stars in ‘Jackie Brown’?” — basically referring to Pam Grier, Robert Forster. I go, “No, I thought they were fantastic.” “Yeah, but it could have done better.” Then I go: “What do you mean? Fifteen million dollars on a movie starring Pam Grier and Robert Forster, that’s pretty good.” Advertisement Continue reading the main story He goes, “Yeah, but that’s all you.” I go: “Great, lucky me. If I’m enough of a name that people will go see my movie, then I don’t have to cast an actor who can open the film.” Q. You also use the same actors over and over again the way Bergman did. Why? Because you feel comfortable with these people? Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up Privacy Policy A.

I do feel comfortable with the people, but also all my favorite directors had some sort of stock company that they used again and again. These people understand your world, understand your words, understand your working method. And your fans like them, they like the familiar faces. I like it when L. Q. Jones pops up in a Sam Peckinpah movie. I like that these people become recognizable troops for your universe. The Written Word Q. Speaking of “Jackie Brown,” it’s your one movie that’s based on somebody else’s idea, Elmore Leonard’s novel “Rum Punch.” Why was it that you did that? Leonard writes dialogue that’s a lot like yours. Is that part of it? A. There was even more to it than that, because Elmore Leonard was a real mentor to me as far as writing is concerned. He helped me find my voice — the way that he would set up these genre stories you’ve seen a zillion times but then let real life complicate them and [mess] up the scenarios from time to time but in a very realistic way. That’s kind of what I was doing in my early writing.

So his work gave me permission to explore that voice, a voice I already kind of had. When I was younger I was thinking, “Oh wow, when I become a director I can see every other movie I do being an Elmore Leonard novel.” Now I’ve become a director, and I actually want to do my own things, but that one novel was kind of a leftover from my thoughts and some of my inspirations of the past. Q. There’s this mythology that you’re an autodidact — that you educated yourself in a video store and all you know about is movies. Yet it seems to me that you must have been a tremendous reader as well. You couldn’t have been just zonking out on movies all those years. A. Not that there’s anything wrong with that but no, I was reading all the time. Most of my reading was genre fiction, a lot of paperbacks, anything that had a good story. Open it up, read a couple pages, if it grabs you — boom — take it home. Cinema literature, and then certain novelists that I fell in love with. J. D.

Salinger in particular was a big inspiration to me, and not all of Larry McMurtry’s books but some of them. I really like that a lot of Larry McMurtry’s books take place in this one universe and the supporting character of one story could have his own novel eight years later. Q. That’s kind of true with your work. Mr. Blonde in “Reservoir Dogs” could have worked for Bill in “Kill Bill.” Advertisement A. Yeah, I want it to be that way. I like everything to take place in my own Quentin universe. Q. I’m told that your scripts are really written. They’re more like novels than screenplays. A. Yeah, they are. Q. Since you’re the director, you don’t need to spell all this stuff out for yourself, do you? A. I have a writer’s journey going on and a filmmaker’s journey going on, and obviously they’re symbiotic, but they also are separate. When I write my scripts it’s not really about the movie per se, it is about the page. It’s supposed to be literature.

I write stuff that’s never going to make it in the movie and stuff that I know wouldn’t even be right for the movie, but I’ll put it in the screenplay. We’ll decide later do we shoot it, do we not shoot it, whatever, but it’s important for the written work. When I finish the script I want the script to be so good that I’m tempted to stop, I’m tempted not to make the movie, because if I just stop right now, I’m the winner. Now I do make them, but I want the screenplay to be that much of a document. I rarely look at the script after that other than to just go over the dialogue. Q. To go back to this education that you gave yourself, if I’m not mistaken you’re not a high-school dropout, you’re a middle-school dropout. A. True that. Q. Obviously it worked in many ways, but do you ever regret it? Do you ever think maybe I should have gone to college? Or would that have ruined you? A. No. The fact that I would quit in middle school just shows how little of the world that I knew.

I thought the way it was in middle school would be the way it was going to be forever. I didn’t even realize that college would be different from ninth grade. I just thought it was more school. Admittedly there’s some braggadocious bragging rights about doing what I did, but I actually think it would have been a fun experience to have gone to college. In a weird way my working at the video store, a minimum-wage job with a bunch of other people working a minimum wage job, all of us around the same age, hanging out together — that’s kind of what you get when you go to college, along with the education. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Soundtrack vs. Score Q. Music in your movies is more than just background, it’s not incidental. In “Django” there’s spaghetti western music, and then all of a sudden there’s rap and then there’s Richie Havens singing “Freedom” from the Woodstock recording. A. Let me just say this just for the record: You can’t really do a spaghetti western anymore. Spaghetti westerns were a thing of their time.

But one of the big influences that spaghetti westerns have had over me cinematically is how they used music and how they bring it to the forefront. There is a part of me that likes to go in from time to time for those big operatic effects. It’s like we’re telling the story and setting everything up, and then there’s the equivalent of what in a musical would be a big dance number or a big musical sequence. I think I did learn that from Italian movies. Q. I have to say at first it was a little jarring to hear hip-hop in “Django.” You’re sitting there and think you’re in one kind of musical universe, and then you break the frame. A. I don’t think like that. If it’s score, it’s my decision. I can put anything on it I want. If in “Inglourious Basterds” Shosanna turned on the radio and David Bowie started coming out, that would be weird and anachronistic. I’m not saying you can’t do it, I’m just saying that you might have to figure that out.

They turn on the radio in a 1944 movie and the Bee Gees start playing, you could say, “Hey, wait a minute.” But if it’s score, it’s score — It can be anything. I just have to pull it off. Q. Your mind must be almost as stuffed with music as it with movies. A. It pretty much is actually. I’ve got a huge record collection, and I have a record room off of my bedroom. It looks just like a used-record store, with record posters and bins of records broken down into genres. That’s a big part of my think tank. When I’m getting ready to write a new movie, or thinking of the story and starting to zero in on it, I’ll go in the record room and start trying to find music for the movie — other soundtracks, songs, whatever. When I do find a couple of pieces, that’s two or three steps closer to actually being a movie. Now who knows if those three songs will end up being in the finished movie? But it gets me a little further along. Characters As Performers Q.

Talking about what history does and doesn’t allow — this new movie of yours is the first one that’s not set in a time when there are movies. And yet there’s still this theme of performance. King Schultz has to remind Django that they’re putting on an act. This idea of acting or performing comes up all the time in your work. Your movies know that they’re movies, and they’re not trying to pretend otherwise. Advertisement A. It’s not exactly the same thing, what you’re talking about. Some of my movies know they’re movies — in particular “Kill Bill” and “Death Proof.” Q. And “Inglourious Basterds” is saturated with movie awareness. A. Yeah, but I don’t know that they’re walking around acting as if they’re in a movie. A theme all my characters share is that they’re all good actors and use acting techniques. They’re always playing a character to some degree or another. There’s something going on with at least one of the characters that they have to put on a persona. They have to hide who they are and pretend to be something else.

Probably the one recurring line in all my movies is when at some point somebody says to somebody else, “We gotta stay in character.” In “Reservoir Dogs” it’s obvious that Tim Roth is the one pretending to be somebody he’s not. You even get to see the little acting class that he goes through. Q. Why is this such an important theme for you? A. I don’t know. That’s the kind of film writing I like to do about other people. That’s really not for me to say about myself. I don’t know why I keep doing that, but I guess I do. Q. Are there ideas stored up or will you have to fill the tank when you finish doing all the “Django” publicity? A I don’t know the next movie I want to do. I started writing a novel a little bit ago, a real novel, and I’ve got about three chapters. This movie was really hard. It’s hard to make even a mock epic like this. Even just staging all this slavery stuff had a wear and tear on my soul and my psyche.

I remember reading a review that Pauline Kael wrote about some director’s big epic, and she said: Now, look, it might seem unfair to judge a talented man more harshly when he tries to do something big than a less talented person who’s doing something easier. But when you try big things, you take big risks, and if you’re trying to do something that is maybe above you and you can’t quite pull off, then whereas before we only saw your gifts, now we see your failings. I’ve always been pushing that envelope. I want to risk hitting my head on the ceiling of my talent. I want to really test it out and say: O.K., you’re not that good. You just reached the level here. I don’t ever want to fail, but I want to risk failure every time out of the gate. A version of this article appears in print on December 23, 2012, on Page AR1 of the New York edition with the headline: Quentin’s World. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

Question: Who directed the 2012 film 'Django Unchained'?
Answer: QUENTIN TARANTINO